Throughout the past 120 years, hunting has linked the semi-arid Kaokoveld (northwestern Namibia) to global trade networks simultaneously embedding it within global aspirations to preserve African fauna untrammelled. The hunting of elephants for ivory, of endemic species for scientific inventories, of large game for the leisurely hunt, and clandestine poaching by South African officials and military, as well as contemporary forms of legalised hunting for trophies and saleable game meat, have continuously connected local pastoral communities, the environment, the state, and external globally operating actors. Flows of trophies, commodities, services, knowledge, and weapons between hunters, carriers and scouts, scientists and translators, intermediary traders and operators, state officials, and experts of international organisations have contributed not only to the dynamic development of a specific local–global interface, but also to the continuous re-shaping of biocultural frontiers between game species and humans. These flows have been strongly driven by the shifting tides of commodification of game, its state-enforced de-commodification, and its recent recommodification. This paper first addresses the elephant hunts of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, and the hunting for scientific purposes in the first half of the twentieth century. It then proceeds to look at 'subsistence' hunting, and leisure hunting by colonial officials, and finally deals with modern trophy-hunting in the context of community-based natural resource management. Keywords: Conservancy, trophy-hunting, poaching, ivory, elephants.